Tomas raised his hand. “Wait. Why can’t a quantum computer do the calculations without the Ai?” He said.
Seo-yun grimaced. “It can, but an ordinary software can’t do it as precise as an Ai can. The Ai’s have the ability to coordinate and use quantum computer’s assets in such a way to increase its capabilities by a factor of 12. We have still not been able to figure out why.” She said. Tomas saw that their inability to find the cause of the increase in ability was annoying her. She had never liked unsolved puzzles, it was one of the reasons he hired her, and showed her the alien ship so many years ago.
Tomas sighed. “Alright, I know that you feel that the Ai pose no threat, if they are treated right, but I still want you to be careful. The aliens shackled their Ai’s for a reason, and I don’t want us to make any mistakes.” He said while looking Seo-yun in the eyes. She held his glare, and was about to say something when she changed her mind and nodded.
“Good, that is an amazing discovery, and I have no doubt that it will be remembered in the history books, but you said you have one more thing to tell me. I doubt that it could be more amazing than what I just heard” Tomas said.
Seo-yun’s expression immediately changed from serious to amused, which immediately told Tomas that he was wrong, this will be even more amazing.
“I so enjoy to prove you wrong.” Seo-yun said while smiling and batting her eyelashes at him, which in turn made him smile with her.
“Go on then, prove me wrong.” Tomas said.
“Well, you know that we got a lot of medical knowledge from the alien ship.” She said, and Tomas nodded. “Well, the knowledge itself was worthless to us, as it was all about alien physiology, so it was of low importance, but one of our geneticist was looking through it in his spare time, and something he saw in there, on one of the races that the Union encountered gave him an idea. So he worked on it in his spare time for the past few years, until finally a year ago he had a breakthrough. He went to his team leader and showed her his work, and she in turn showed it to me. I gave her the permission to focus all our available resources on it, and then we had another breakthrough a few months ago. The final test results came in yesterday, so now it is confirmed. We have been able to create an artificial gene, that when introduced into human DNA, causes our cells to stop decaying, stop dying, in other words it stops entropy. With this gene we can remove death. Each one of us with this gene, will live forever, barring that we don’t have a violent death or die from disease.” Seo-yun said grinning.
Tomas looked at her with mouth and eyes wide open disbelieving what he heard, he thought that she must be pulling his leg, but he knew her better than that, she never joked with her work. Living forever, he tried to wrap his head around the concept, it was unbelievable.
“That, that… That is insane.” He finally said.
“Yes it is.” Seo-yun said still smiling.
“My god, what are we going to do?” Tomas asked uneasily.
“What do you mean?”
“This could change everything.”
Seo-yun’s smile slipped at the expression on Tomas’s face.
“How?” Seo-yun asked.
“This could change everything it means to be human. Imagine what it would do to religion, or how it will influence people lives. Or what it would do to Earth if we give this to them. The Earth is already overpopulated, if people stop dying… It could lead to the collapse of our entire race at the worst, at best it will redefine the human existence.” Tomas said gravely.
Seo-yun looked at Tomas, understanding dawning in her eyes.
“We will need to be very careful about how we introduce this.” Tomas said.
Seo-yun started to protest but he cut her off.
“I’m not saying that we don’t share it, I just think that we need to be aware that this will impact our entire race, and before we introduce this kind of an upheaval to our culture, our way of life, we must be ready to face the consequences.” Tomas said.
“You are right.” Seo-yun said, and knew that with this one discovery, more than any other before, Olympus will yet again change the world.
Chapter Eighteen
February 2103
Adrian and his teammates waited inside of the training base’s landing bay for the transport ship to dock. Their team had passed the training, after that first stumble Bethany and Adrian managed to clear the air between them and started to work together on tactics for the team battles, instead of leading alternatingly, they led together. It proved to be the right choice, after that first loss they had won every other match, bringing their team to the top spot. After the deadline, Force Commander Pierce informed them that only the top three teams passed, and the third one just barley. The other teams were crestfallen, but the Force Commander informed them that they could stay one more year and try to pass with the next class, that they could keep their ranks of cadet tier 1 and join the fleet at that level, or chose another path in the fleet, they always needed people. Some stayed behind, while others chose to remain cadets, and try to work their way up the ranks through service. From those that passed, only team 9 was told to board the transport that would take them to their new assignment, they weren’t told yet what ranks they acquired by passing the test. The other two teams were told that they would remain on the base for another week. Team 9 had little time to celebrate, they spent only a few hours at the stations bar, and then they had to go to sleep, in order to wake up and be on time to board the transport tomorrow morning. They didn’t even know where they were going.